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5 Tips for Better Business Blogging

Does your business have a blog? Is it driving new traffic to your website? Is it being used to speak to industry news or trends that are meaningful to your customer base?

Blogging can be a potent tool for attracting new visitors to your company website. It can also deepen engagement with existing customers, develop loyal brand advocates and turn curious industry influencers into promoters for your brand—all in 600 words or less and one quick click.

Businesses that blog see 126% higher growth in lead generation than those who do not. It is also a key ingredient to any inbound marketing strategy. Isn’t that reason enough to revisit and refresh that blog queue?

Here are 5 tips for reviving your business blog:

Host your own blog. If you are blogging for business purposes but hosting on site like WordPress.org or Blogger, you are losing all of that amazing search engine optimization that comes with blogging. In other words, you are missing one of the key benefits. Each blog post is an additional optimized page on your site. It builds authority in the search engines for the whole of your website. Remember though—you are writing for real people and not the search engines.

Create blog posts that are relevant, educational and/or fun. Never ever try to make it a sales pitch. Your users are smarter than that. Leave the product and service selling to the website or your sales team. Your company blog should stay away from self-promotion or blatantly pushing people to buy your product. This is your opportunity to add dimension to your business personality; it allows the user to get a peek into what inspires you as a business.

Know your audience. Post for unique reader sets. Existing as well as potential customers are reading your blog. Other bloggers or influencers who curate industry related content are always looking for quality content to share. If you don’t know who your unique users are–in our world, we call them personas—take a stab at it. Personas are a fictional representation of users who have similar reasons for seeking your solutions. Your posts should solve for their problems. Make sure to write posts that speak to each of your personas, don’t leave anyone out.

Promote your blog in all social channels. Blogs do nothing for you if no one is reading it. Make sure to give readers the opportunity read, share and link to your posts. Use social buttons. Prompt users to sign up for your blog. Make it prominent on your website. Include new posts in emails. Additionally, encourage your internal team to share and repost content in their respective social channels, as appropriate. Do any and all you can to expand your reach into new social circles.

Always measure your performance. Look at what’s working and do more of that. One of the things I love most about digital marketing is the ability to track performance of campaigns. Look at your blog analytics—what posts had the most engagement (shares, likes, comments) and reach (visits and traffic)? Is there a day, time or channel that has more traction than other days, times or channels? Look at the poorest performers to gain an understanding of what’s not working. Is it overly complicated? Are the headlines vague? You should measure at least monthly, but looking weekly will help you as you plan out your next week’s posts.

Blogging as a business is a very smart thing to do. It is one of the most effective ways to attract potential customers to your site. Blogs drive organic traffic and help to establish thought leadership—if you do it right. Your website makes your business case, but a blog helps you showcase your business’s point on view on topics that are timely and speak more personally to your prospective and existing customers alike.